by Annabelle Bladon, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) - The World Trade Organization resumed talks on fishing subsidies this week. Originally, it committed that by the end of 2019 it would prohibit the subsidies that are causing overfishing and damaging the life of the ocean. But despite the urgency, it failed to meet this deadline. This has significant implications for life in the ocean, the health and livelihoods of poor coastal communities in developing countries and climate change

by Rebecca Froese & Janpeter Schilling, both University of Koblenz-Landau - Environmental Peacebuilding connects environmental projects with peacebuilding. The German Government should recognize this potential to overcome common challenges such as climate change.

Commentary by Janpeter Schilling (University of Koblenz-Landau): Why war rhetoric in the time of the coronavirus pandemic is not only wrong, but dangerous - A “bazooka” is what the German Federal Minister of Finance, Olaf Scholz, recently called an aid package to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus. In the same press conference he later mentioned “small arms”, which would also be ready to fight the virus. For the otherwise rather unemotional Scholz, this is an unusual choice of words. Early on in the corona crisis, French President Emmanuel Macron stated “We are at war“. Donald Trump, the self-appointed US “Wartime President” even speaks of “our big war“. Why are important politicians using such a martial vocabulary in their responses to the corona pandemic? And is this okay?

by Anne Hennings, PhD, University of Muenster - Much has been written on the global land rush, its implications for affected communities and the environment, as well as its conflict potential. However, I argue that assemblage thinking provides a particularly insightful analytical lens to zoom into exclusion mechanisms at play in plantations and respective efforts of contestation. Even in spaces of tight surveillance, increasing intra-community cleavages, and the breakdown of social institutions, I show how the emergence of unusual alliances and solidarity may challenge the status quo.

by Michael S. Wilson-Becerril, Colgate University | @mwilsonbecerril - Each year, hundreds of people around the Global South die resisting and contesting resource extraction. While reports attending to this matter are growing, the phenomenon itself is not particularly new. Indeed, violent extractivism is central to the project of Western modernity.

by Julia Renner, University of Koblenz-Landau - “The water levels are currently enormous, but local people lack adequate provision of water!” This observation struck me during my field research around Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Therefore, enlarging the research puzzle on the water-conflict nexus, I investigate how water shortages at water abundant areas impact low-key conflicts in Kenya.

by Janpeter Schilling, Christina Saulich & Nina Engwicht - How do global schemes of resource certification and global demand for valuable resources like diamonds and land influence local conflicts? How do local resource and conflict dynamics influence global processes related to resource demand and certification? To address these questions, we have edited a special issue in the journal Conflict, Security and Development that introduces a local to global framework to examine resource governance and conflicts across scales.

by Sören Köpke, University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology - The conflict dimensions of large-scale land acquisitions and water management issues have gained a lot of scholarly attention over the last decade. A small, but growing research community is investigating the social consequences of extractive industries. There is a need for integrative approaches bringing these topics together – inquiries into the food-water-energy-mining nexus.

by Tobias Ide, Georg Eckert Institute & TU Braunschweig Adrien Detges, adelphi, Berlin - The links between climate change and conflict receive increasing scholarly attention. But which places are analysed most frequently by researchers working on the issue?

by Louisa Prause, Freie Universität Berlin - The term ‘shrinking spaces’ describes state actions that aim to restrict civil societies’ activities. In this article I investigate in how far spaces for civil society action are also influenced by changes in land control by looking at two cases of large-scale land transformations in Senegal.

by Sina Schlimmer, Sciences Po Bordeaux, Les Afriques dans le Monde - Questions arising from the phenomenon of the “global land grab” have been shaping the agendas of NGOs, World Bank conferences and academic seminars for about a decade. The publications dedicated to this hot topic are nearly uncountable. This ongoing discussion about a seemingly new wave of large-scale agricultural investments by international companies in countries of the Global South poses several methodological and conceptual challenges for scholars. Basing on the results of my PhD research, this article invites to reconsider the hype on “land grabbing” as a public problem which is constructed on different levels.

by Rosine Tchatchoua-Djomo, Leiden University, the Netherlands - The shift from violence to peace in Burundi has been marked by heavy contestations over land as a result of mass displacement and repatriation (see Kamungi, Oketch & Huggins, 2005). To facilitate policy-making, these land disputes have been framed by different (inter-)national actors as opposing two major camps: repatriates vs occupants. In this dichotomist representation, repatriates refer mainly to former Hutu civilians who fled mass violence perpetrated by former Tutsi-dominated ruling regimes; while occupants involve civilians who took over refugees’ land in their prolonged absence. Yet, these land disputes are much more complex than that.

by Sarah Kirst, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany - A small village in the northern part of Ghana: Together with my research assistant and eleven other men – the elders of the village – I am sitting in the shade of a big sheanut tree. Shortly before I already made a courtesy call on the chief of the village. I paid him my respect by presenting him the obligatory drinks money before asking him for his permission concerning the upcoming interviews with his elders. These days he is old and fragile. Yet, few years earlier he was the one who decided – in consultation with his elders – to lease out thousands of hectares of community land to a Norwegian company.

Natural resources are ever more contested – be it land, forests, minerals, water or pastures. From Papua New Guinea to Brazil, from Kenya to the Middle East, peasants, pastoralists, indigenous people, or urban dwellers, but also political and economic elites, claim access to these resources. Global climate change has furthermore strong effects on the availability of renewable resources, as do various kinds of land, green or even blue grabs and increasing population growth. How do these conflicts arise, how are they pursued, and how can they be solved – these are some of the key questions of our new blog.